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By TRAY BUTLE
Friday, December 09, 2005
In the weeks before filming began on “Brokeback Mountain,” director
Ang Lee met individually with his lead actors to impart guidance about handling
their roles.
With Heath Ledger, the advice was simple.
“The main thing I remember Ang telling me was, ‘stillness,’”
Ledger says.
It’s an appropriately Zen imperative from the Taiwanese director, whose
2000 masterpiece “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” earned him a reputation
for squeezing soulful, intimate performances out of actors in grandiose settings.
And Lee’s advice cuts to the core of Ledger’s character, Ennis Del
Mar, a conflicted ranch hand who only feels safe when he’s in the quiet
majesty of the Wyoming wilderness and in the arms of his unlikely soul mate,
Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal).
But that idea of “stillness” feels a million miles from the ear-splitting
buzz surrounding the film itself. “Brokeback Mountain” may be the
single most talked about gay movie of all time — propelled by its two
straight leads and the firestorm of speculation over how Hollywood would handle
such a unapologetic tale of same-sex romance.
Ledger and Gyllenhaal’s rash of recent magazine covers and the festival
circuit’s acclaim for the film only fanned the flames that burn on countless
“Brokeback” postings online.
As the world braces for the film’s Dec. 9 opening, it’s almost
as if there are two “Brokeback Mountains”: the movie itself, which
is a somber and gut-wrenching love story in the tradition of celluloid weepies,
and the “Brokeback” buzz, with its hope of Oscar acclaim and twin
fears of a Red State backlash against Hollywood’s very gay autumn.
Screenwriter Diana Ossana scoffs at any supposed controversy.
“People come in with these preconceived notions of the film, the ‘gay
cowboy movie.’ It got that tagline after about three or four years, and
we just rolled our eyes at it,” says Ossana, who co-wrote the screenplay
with Western novelist Larry McMurtry.
But after people see the film, she says, they can’t stop thinking about
it.
“They’ll tell me, ‘You know, I never really thought about
gay men and their lives, I always tried to avoid it, but I really felt bad for
those guys. “I didn’t know they felt the way that we do,’”
Ossana says. “Which floored me.”
NOT ALL OF THE HYPE is universally positive. Last month, contrarian blogger
Matt Drudge dug up an unnamed Wyoming playwright (who turned out to be Sandy
Dixon, originally quoted in the Casper, Wyo., Tribune) who said she’d
never met a gay cowboy and accused the film’s writers of trying to ruin
her state’s Western image.
Even some gay fans raised eyebrows when both Gyllenhaal and Ledger indicated
in separate interviews that they don’t think their characters are necessarily
gay.
Ellen Huang, executive director of the nonprofit film group Queer Lounge,
believes those comments were actually part of a marketing campaign.
“You have to connect with the mainstream audience that says you’re
going to get beyond the gayness of it all,” Huang says. “Any heartfelt
love story is about not being able to be with the one you’re supposed
to be with.
“It’s a very enlightened statement,” she continues. “Even
in the gay community, people are trapped in labeling. I think there are people
who love who you love. I think in this case, especially for Heath Ledger’s
character, I feel he just happened to fall in love with a man. What he’s
battling is society’s labeling of him suddenly.”
Ledger seems to have learned his lesson on labels. When asked about the love
story, he delivers a deliberately worded answer on what exactly “gay”
means.
“It’s a touchy subject. If I say, ‘No, it isn’t [gay],’
then a lot of people will say, ‘No it is!’” the 26-year-old
Australian actor says.
Instead, he decided to play Ennis as a character who shows that love can “transcend
all.”
“Whether you want to label him as gay or not, it’s a human being
and his soul falling in love with another soul, which happens to be in the vessel
of a man,” he says. “And I think that’s the point of Annie
Proulx borrowing the masculine Western iconic figure and landscape. Because
it’s so masculine, it shows that love exists in all forms.”
Screenwriters Ossana and McMurtry also heap adoration on Proulx, who wrote
the short story on which the film is based. Ossana picked up the piece when
it originally ran in the New Yorker in 1997. She says she “sobbed liked
a five-year-old” after reaching the end. The next day, she insisted that
her friend and collaborator McMurtry read the story.
“I recognized immediately that this was a story that was a work of genius,”
says McMurtry, author of “The Last Picture Show” and winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for “Lonesome Dove.” “And I wondered, why didn’t
I write it? I’ve been there in the West my whole life.”
Before the end of the year, the two optioned Proulx’s short story with
their own money, but waited in vain as directors and stars came and went on
the project.
“Agents just didn’t want their beloved actors to take on these
‘risky’ roles,” Ossana says.
Finally, Focus Features landed Lee, a director in need of a hit after his
“Hulk” tanked at the box office. His newer work ranges from flying
kung-fu masters (“Crouching Tiger”) to dysfunctional suburbanites
(“The Ice Storm”), but Lee was no stranger to gay storylines: His
1992 comedy “The Wedding Banquet” was about a gay man marrying a
woman to appease his Taiwanese parents.
For McMurtry, Lee seemed like an obvious choice to direct the film. “We
felt that the exile in Ang connects to the exile in Ennis, just a little bit,”
he says. “Ang is exiled from China and Taiwan, while Ennis is exiled from
his community.”
Lee says the love between Ennis and Jack might turn off some moviegoers, but
he was more concerned with capturing the deeper ideas behind the story: the
notion of social obligation versus personal free will.
“There are people who won’t go see this, because of the gay relationship,”
Lee says. “Or from the left side, some will ask if it’s gay enough.
But I can only be honest and try to do justice to the brilliant writing by Annie
Proulx.”
That brilliant writing also attracted fans like Andy Towle, the journalist
and photographer who runs Towleroad.com. As evidenced on his blog, Towle has
been practically obsessed with “Brokeback” for two years, and his
love of the short story goes back a lot longer.
The long-awaited film did not disappoint him. He calls it “groundbreaking.”
“A gay story has never been told in this really classic cinematic context,”
Towle says. “Most of the times people have seen gay storylines in urban
settings and films that either have to do with coming out or AIDS or about nightlife.
This film is shocking in the sense that the gay experience in a familiar cinematic
context. It’s more a story about love than it is about being gay.”
And, as Towle points out, having two hot, young stars playing the leads certainly
helps.
So how will “BROKEBACK” fare at the multiplex? Given its meager
budget of $12.5 million, the film stands to be a financial success even if the
folks in Peoria unilaterally reject the notion of queer cowboys.
Early critical response has been overwhelmingly affectionate. The movie scored
big at the Toronto, Venice and Telluride film festivals, even though it was
rejected by Cannes. Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” and
placed its two stars on the cover of last week’s issue. The movie also
earned four nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards.
Huang of Queer Lounge expects the film to be a hit. She notes that even some
blogs by straight male writers are reviewing the movie positively, in addition
to the glowing response from mainstream magazines.
“These doors will open,” she says. “I think Hollywood is
a very fickle monster. If the next two films with major stars playing gay characters
tank, they will very quickly blame it on the gay aspect of the film.”
On the other hand, the movie may well repeat the success of, say, “Philadelphia,”
and land Oscar statues. Ledger already appears posed to win a nomination for
his role.
Huang says this fits with the way the Academy tends to operate. “I think
right now in order for gay-themed movies to be made, they have to be Oscar bait,”
she says. “I think it’s going to take a while before people start
seeing gay James Bond. Gay characters have to be so mainstreamed that there’s
no need for Oscar bait anymore.”
LEDGER REMAINS characteristically stoic when the topic of gold statues comes
up, and he is equally less inclined to discuss any controversy the movie might
stir up.
“That’s kind of out of my hands, really isn’t it?”
he says. “It’s obviously not that controversial to me.”
His sentiment neatly reflects the character of Ennis, who keeps his thoughts
hidden for most of the movie. That “stillness” — a quiet urgency,
really — and the rumbling just beneath the surface are aspects that elevate
“Brokeback Mountain” beyond its hype and makes it a film for the
ages.
“Sometimes in acting, or in life, words can kind of complicate things.
They can confuse an issue,” Ledger says.
“If anything, [Ennis’s quietude] gave me more room and more space
to express what I wanted.”
Brian Moylan and Andrew Keegan contributed.
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